William Zorach

(American, 1887–1966)

William Zorach was a Lithuanian-born American artist known for his landscape paintings and sculptures of nudes and animals. His watercolor landscapes are reminiscent of both John Marin and Marsden Hartley, while his sculptures present a totemic mysticism akin to the work of Henry Moore. Born Zorach Samovich on February 28, 1889 in Jubarkas, Lithuania, his family emigrated to the United States, settling in Cleveland, OH in 1891 where they changed their name to Finkelstein. Zorach was notably one of earliest American artists to advocate for and embrace Cubism. In the 1920s, he gave up painting and turned to sculpture exclusively. "The actual resistance of tough material is a wonderful guide," Zorach said. The sculptor "cannot make changes easily, there is no putting back tomorrow what was cut away today. His senses are constantly alert. If something goes wrong there is the struggle to right the rhythm. And slowly the vision grows as the work progresses." The artist’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Zorach died on November 15, 1966 in Bath, ME.